Lawsons adds electric lift trucks to its fleet

Date: 13 May 2019

Lawsons Timber has announced it has received two C4000Es from Combilift at its Merton branch, in line with a general move towards electric power in a number of sectors.

Much has changed since the company’s infancy when horses, carts and manual labour were used for customer deliveries and timber handling. Lawsons now runs a fleet of approximately 100 vehicles from 3.5 tonnes to 32 tonnes from its 17 branches in and around London, including a loft lifter for the delivery of loft packages.

Lawsons’ Combilifts, most of which are 4 tonne C4000 models, handle long products such as 6m packs of timber weighing up to around 3 tonnes, and are also universal trucks for handling plasterboard, blocks, bricks and palletised loads, within the racking as well as outside. The most recent additions, however, were two C4000Es at the Merton branch and numerous STEs at Whetstone and Camden.

Group Transport Manager, David Harvey, explained: “We are keen to keep emissions as low as we can for the good of the environment, and also to keep noise levels to a minimum for our neighbours in residential areas, and these electric models tick all the boxes on both counts. Electric power is definitely the way forward for us and our drivers also like the quiet operation they offer.”

Matt Long, who works at the Merton branch, added: “The guide rollers on the truck together with guided aisle operation make it so much quicker to access the aisles and speed up picking and placing, and there’s no risk of damaging the products either. Once the guys have been trained on the Combilift they never want to drive anything else.”